Oscar Wilde’s second trial began on May 20. This time, the British Liberal Government seemed determined to secure a conviction against Wilde. The Prime Minister, the Earl of Rosebery, was himself suspected of having had a homosexual affair when he was the Foreign Minister with no less than Francis Douglas, another of Queensberry’s sons. Francis Douglas was killed in a hunting accident (widely believed to be suicide). There is plausible evidence that Rosebery himself would be threatened with exposure by Queensberry if he failed to prosecute Wilde. (From “The Collector”)
Christopher Wheeldon’s “Oscar” is a darkly inscrutable if lavish production, boasting a robust Joby Talbot score. It gains its heft on the Australian National Ballet’s dancer grit, stamina, storied artistry, and the collaboration it brokered in no time flat with the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. For most of its two-hours, the audience adheres to the edge of Zellerbach Hall’s seats and sightlines. The problem Wheeldon could not overcome in his account of the celebrated writer Oscar Wilde’s indecency trial, is the ballet’s conceptualization. He tells a story from the past that hinges precariously on a woke-coded moral reckoning. That calculus is derived from present-day axioms and their suppositions. Whether stirred or shaken, this inorganic roux separates before our very eyes. Wheeldon becomes its supplicant, and the 19th century pedophile, a victim of an attack on what some wish or insist are gay rights. All in all, an embarrassing anachronism is caught with its pants around its ankles.
Wheeldon, an OBE, is entitled to an extra “E” for effort. To create “Oscar,” he has sucked a libretto out of his thumb. It comes draped in the loose threads left dangling for the 136 years since Wilde’s sentencing for pederasty.
During intermission, Australian National Ballet Artistic Director David Hallberg shares with the press that Wheeldon wants the audience to see itself in what happens on stage, illuminated by a halo of 2026 woke-sourced “diversity.” We return to our seats to see that “Oscar” greets us with a deliberate confusion of two inimical historical periods. Each one tugs at what it considers its half from a crazy quilt of aristocratic angst, revenge, blackmail, and pederasty charges, the last of which are vilified in today’s woke idiom as gay bashing.
Does “Oscar” owe its allegiance to a divine right-sanctioned swagger of libertinism or is it simply telling the mournful story of a gay writer done a two-year injustice? It’s a production built on the shape-shifting prosecution-read-persecution of a gifted writer. The writer is also part-time husband to a tradwife, father to two children, and full-time pedophile-sans-portfolio. The through-line could be that decadence is a rite of passage for the authentic artist. If so, what hobbles it thematically? Why can’t Oscar be Everyman (or at least Every Gay Man)? Why does he look as if he’s been wrapped in cellophane and stuck on the century-old goods rack at the local Tesco?
The problem starts when what the audience sees is that Wheeldon’s Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, not a solitary loose thread, let alone the quilt in which we are supposed to swaddle with him and his dilemma. The hoped-for Untold Gay Rights Historiography is suddenly exposed as an ahistoric non-starter.
Just as Wilde’s eponymous “Portrait of Dorian Gray” turned Mother Nature’s aging process inside out to distort the appearance of its protagonist, Wheeldon reverses the roles of audience and players to flatter a trendier virtue signal currently in vogue. The dancers are tasked with reflecting diversity back to the audience, but the audience refuses to play. They are there to see the show they paid to see. They don’t see themselves in the (count them) 138 roles ripped from 19th-century jurispudence that sixty dancers have been jetted in to portray! Turning the audience inside out won’t win them to viewing Wilde not from the perspective of the courtroom silks who try him, but him suffering the logical consequences for doing what comes naturally: having his way with whomever looks tasty.
Ballet companies and their schools have faced their share of pedophilia lawsuits. The audience may lack familiarity with the taxonomy of such abuse, but it is uncomfortably familiar with the ironies of male sexual entitlement—gay or otherwise. Constance (Sharni Spencer), Wilde’s wife, is served up as that ubiquitous cocktail: one part “pitiable” to two parts “contempt worthy.” It’s a role meant to spark recognition of the long-suffering hetero woman double-yoked in a marriage with a bisexual or gay man. While this splash of misogynist bitters may gratify some audience members, my best guess is that none of the gratified are biological women. As a biological woman in a ballet audience, “diverse” is not what I’m feeling reflected. What does impress about Spencer is the steadfastness of her magnificent balance at the top of a lift. It must be said that she parries her one-dimensional placeholder role to good effect.
As a biological female audience member, am I obligated to see myself “reflected” in Constance’s misfortunes while finessing Oscar’s dalliances, just as she does? If that’s who she must be, I’m not having what she’s having because that’s not me. I am, however, the girl who, at 15, was gleefully slapped on her posterior by my modern dance teacher at New York’s High School of Performing Arts. She was an ex-officio member of the Martha Graham Dance Company.
At the time, my reaction was two-fold. 1) I reasoned that since she was a lesbian and an exponent of Modern Dance, she was preternaturally given to expressing herself “freely.” 2) Smacking my rear was just her ham-handed way of complimenting my triplets, executed cleanly across a cold linoleum lunchroom floor where we, as drama, not dance majors, were siloed to take class.
Several weeks thereafter, as I hurried down a rain-drenched 14th Street to the Fifth Avenue studios where she apparently also taught or took class, this teacher raced to cozy up to me on the pretext of sharing an umbrella. That’s when all rationalizations washed down the drain: Here was an adult who overstepped; this time, a woman, not a man. Neither her sex, nor proclivities exonerated her. She was out of line.
I advocate for and defend gay and lesbian civil and human rights. I also honor the distinction between those rights and sexual harassment masquerading as a libertine prerogative.
Actress Nicole Walker’s character Stevie, in the Britbox series “River,” tells River, “Sex is an itch you just scratch. But love…That’s the itch so far down your back, you can’t ever reach it with your own hand.” Male or female, gay or not, at 14 or 40, Stevie’s distinction resonates. It helps us zero in on what we’re made of that makes us who we are in the world. Who but a reprobate opportunist would steal that aggregating pearl by trading on the arbitrary but unbidden authority of seniority. Who but such an individual would deliberately sow a confusion of gay rights with “intergenerational” predatory sexual lassitude? If the elder of the two were not gay, what entitlement could he or she invoke that could pass for acceptable? Pedophilia does not get to be smuggled into the just campaign to win Gay Rights. Pedophilia is a gross violation of civil and human rights, gay-flavored or otherwise. In the 1990s, the National Man-Boy Love Society (NAMBLA) tried to ride into Whoville on the crest of the burgeoning gay rights movement. It sought to enshrine pedophilia as a gay right trampled upon by the courts. That gambit lost traction fast. Some scratches can turn to gangrene in the wink of an eye.
A memory that will remain vivid is the Wilde (Calum Linnane) character’s opening solo danced masterfully. The cut of his swashbuckling is adept, clean, and fully convincing to all but Wilde. Having a troubled character inhabit such bandbox virtuosity is dance theatre in all its glory—a divertissement I celebrate as an undiversifiable. Wheeldon sorts the music and the space as complementary. He favors circular enchaînements, on exuberant steps to a three-quarter tempo. Early on, as a very young choreographer, he leaned on it fully. Here, the circular carries itself blissed, punctuated with deft pocket profiles capturing this or that moment in a strobe-lit flash. When the temperature rises in Act II, the tempo sweats its agonies, as dancers gang together in dark, ropey canons of debauched despair.
Australian National Ballet’s dancers are of the highest caliber and forge a neural helix around the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. The dancers and musicians fully see what’s asked of them. Thanks to their unflagging commitment to jot and tittle, so do we. Seeing the audience as it sees itself, can remind Wheeldon of the power of universality in his “Cinderella.” It’s so delightfully present in the slipper trying-on scene. Each party to the competition is unimpeachably unique, all bound by a contradictory shared purpose—to disqualify their co-contenders. It’s a quality that’s easy to locate, just there, tucked into our best best instincts, glistening in the nugget that yields sumptuous, unsullied rewards.
